For Advanced Users: Using FTP, SFTP and WebDAV to access your files within other apps

Livedrive have always believed that one of our tasks is to make your online data as accessible as possible, so that you can use it in any way you like. That’s one of the reasons why we are so excited about our new Pro Suite package – which, along with providing both Livedrive Backup and Livedrive Briefcase in one easy solution, also lets you access your 5TB of online storage using FTP, SFTP and WebDAV.

What are FTP, SFTP and WebDAV?

FTP, SFTP and WebDAV are three different ways that applications can communicate with your online storage. Using any of these services (or “protocols”), applications can see what files are in your account, and upload and download files. Many applications and operating systems support at least one of these standards, which means that you can access your files from within a whole range of software and in new and innovative ways.

Why use these services instead of the Livedrive Desktop Software?

Many customers won’t need to. The Livedrive Desktop Software makes accessing files on your computer so easy, and for the vast majority of Livedrive users it provides everything you’ll need. We recommend using the Livedrive Desktop Software where possible.

However there are customers who use operating systems that we don’t yet support, or developers who want to create software that uses Livedrive’s storage, or people who want to automate or access their online storage from within other software. For these customers, FTP, SFTP and WebDAV are ideal solutions. Please note FTP is only available to Pro Suite and Business users.

How can I use FTP, SFTP and WebDAV?

There are many different applications out there that support these services. For example, you could:

Access your files from within apps on your mobile phone

Display your files as an online drive in Ubuntu or other flavours of Linux

Set up third party backup software to upload files directly to Livedrive

Get your digital camera to upload photos to your Briefcase as soon as you get home

Over the next few months we’ll produce a range of tutorials that show you how to access your files from within applications such as these, but one of the most common ways to access files is to use a FTP, SFTP or WebDAV client – which is software that’s specially designed to access files on services such as Livedrive.

Using FTP or SFTP from FileZilla

FileZilla is a very popular open source FTP client, available for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can download it from here. Using FileZilla you will be able to browse your Livedrive Briefcase (and Team Folders if you’re a business customer) using FTP or SFTP.

When you’ve installed and opened FileZilla, the first thing you’ll want to do is add your Livedrive account to it. Go to File > Site Manager and click on New Site.

There are two ways that FileZilla can connect to Livedrive – FTP or SFTP. FTP is an old, venerable protocol which is supported by many applications, but it’s less secure than SFTP (which is sometimes called Secure FTP). We’d recommend that you use SFTP whenever it is an option.

So – to access your Livedrive account using SFTP, you’d want to use the following settings in Site Manager:

Host: sftp.livedrive.com

Port: leave blank, or 22

Protocol: SFTP

Username: your Livedrive account email address

Password: your Livedrive password

If you wanted to use FTP instead of SFTP you would use:

Host: ftp.livedrive.com

Port: leave blank, or 20

Protocol: FTP

Username: your Livedrive account email address

Password: your Livedrive password

Click on the Connect button and FileZilla will connect to your account. You will find you can browse your files in the same way that you would on your computer, and can drag and drop files between your computer and your Livedrive account.

Using WebDAV from Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a popular open source client for Windows and Mac. You can download it here. It supports a number of different protocols – including FTP and SFTP, so you could use it in the FTP/SFTP example above instead of FileZilla if you wanted. However one extra protocol that Cyberduck supports is WebDAV.

WebDAV is a very flexible protocol that has been around for a long time, but is increasingly popular as a way for software to talk to remote files. There are many operating systems and applications that now support WebDAV.

WebDAV can be used with encryption or without encryption. Without encryption WebDAV is a lot like FTP – it’s fast and it works well, but it’s less secure. With encryption, WebDAV is more like SFTP. Livedrive would recommend using encryption where possible.

Once you’ve installed and opened Cyberduck, click on Open Connection to bring up the new connection window. In the dropdown at the top, you can select the type of connection. Select “WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning” for unencrypted WebDAV, or “WebDAV (HTTP/SSL)” for encrypted WebDAV. Then enter the following details:

Connection Type: WebDAV (HTTPS/SSL)

Server: webdav.livedrive.com

Port: 443

Username: your Livedrive email address or subdomain

Password: your Livedrive password

Click on connect and Cyberduck will connect to Livedrive. If you have connection problems then try using your Livedrive subdomain rather than your email address – some WebDav clients don’t like accepting the email address. Once connected, just like with FileZilla, you can browse your folders as you would on your computer, and you can drag and drop files between your desktop and Livedrive.

What if I’m an existing “Backup & Briefcase” customer?

Customers with a legacy product called “Backup & Briefcase” – which is no longer available – have always been able to access their Livedrive Briefcase using FTP, and this will continue. However if you also want to add SFTP and WebDAV to your account then it’s easy for “Backup & Briefcase” customers to upgrade to Pro Suite – just get in touch with our support team who will be delighted to help. You can contact us at support.livedrive.com.

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Hi @Anthony – we haven’t tested it with BCM, and there are many apps like that which don’t particularly like being synced between computers – they prefer to be centralised somewhere. So I would suggest not, to be honest – to be safe.

I want to appreciate Livedrive’s recognition of the importance–and the need–for a secure transport for customers who are using Linux; although I consider myself an early adopter and supporter of the original paid Livedrive unlimited storage solution, two primary considerations had limited my ability to apply it fully:

(1) Whilst ‘m located in Toronto, I also maintain ESX and Amazon EC2 cloud servers at the XO Communications facility in Chicago and the Amazon Virginia facility); there is significant latency and overall low throughput to Livedrive, thus, I haven’t been able to realize Livedrive’s full potential as a full cloud storage solution. I’ve been able to schedule regular backups of log, conf, and other data files; however, transfer rates have averaged around 40-60kbps, making Livedrive inappropriate to mount more dynamic content, at least from my locations.

I realize that being able to backup via rsync/diff would be expecting too much, but even being able to replace the incremental cost of more responsive Amazon S3/more expensive storage local to the ESX Datastores via curlftpfs–and now with SFTP via sshfs–would more easily justify the increased price and decreased storage plan; and

(2) World ipv6 day still in recent memory, as an active member of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, one of whose initiatives continues to be increased ipv6 adoption, it would be more than simply a token gesture to make Livedrive ipv6-reachable–or at the very least, to outline an ipv6 adoption plan so that those of us who wish to plan an active role in the continued viability of the very Internet that I presume all of us here depend on, to varying degrees, can consider Livedrive a proactive part of the transition rather than a contingency or an unknown quantity! Although only one ISP in Toronto that I am aware of (Teksavvy Internet) offers native ipv6 to its DSL customers as a free beta, anyone that can route protocol 41 (or can set up an ipv6 tunnel endpoint in a DMZ for routers that do not otherwise support protocol 41 tunnelling) can easily obtain tunnelled ipv6 from Tunnelbroker; and others who need a more active NAT-traversal tunneling solution can apply for an NAT-traversing tunnel from sixx.net

One final comment regarding the SFTP implementation is that although the encrption and key exchange provided by the ssh connection provide at least a modicum of demonstrable security–perhaps even the minimum acceptable to some small businesses for “due diligence” purposes, its efficacy is significantly mitigated by the ability to authenticate via password. One of the strengths of an ssh-based connection is the ability to prohibit short (10- to 20-character, for example) passwords and require public key (1024- to 2048-bit) authentication; although there are a significant number of combinations of 10- to 20-character passwords, a simple brute-force approach could easily compromise such a short password, but requiring pubkey at least 100 times longer would not only allow businesses to place confidence in the transport being reasonably secure but also allow automation of the authentication process (again, circumventing the ssh password prompting with a short password only amplifies the exposure).

Happy Civic Holiday long weekend to those of you in Canada–and abroad, even if it’s not a long weekend!

I am trying to connect livedrive with flex action script code,with your given information
(ftp.livedrive.com, port: 21 and 20) my user name and livedrive password, i can connect with other ftp server like freehostia, but i need to upload/download with livedrive.

let me know how can you help me about this.
please try to reply me , i can contact to live drive support team for this issue this is very imp for us.

I use Lotus Approach as a database manager for 12 relate datatables (*.DBF format) on a XP PC. At present only people on the local network in the UK can use them. I have an office in Russia and I want the team in Russia to use the same databases. Does WebDav allow me to share my DBF files between sites? I want real time rather than synced connectivity. Is WebDav any different from sharing files in a synced folder?

I know Approach will run as a client for a MySQL server. It can even export the *.DBF’s as SQL. Do you have a MySQL solution?

I tried signing up for a free trial tonight. The clock has started but something failed during the credit card sign up so I don’t have full access to things.

Can you please sign into http://support.livedrive.com and click on the submit a ticket option. If you can select the billing option and then list exactly what you did and at what point the card fails we can try to resolve the problem very quickly. If you can also include a screenshot of the failed notice it would be greatly appreciated.

Regarding WebDav, we support the following commands:

PROPPATCH
MKCOL
GET
HEAD
POST
PUT
DELETE
COPY
MOVE
LOCK
UNLOCK

WebDAV is not our product it’s a generic transfer method like FTP, we can provide you with a storage area which will allow WebDAV connectivity but you would really need to investigate WebDAV to see if it will support what you are trying to do.

I tried FileZilla and WinSCP to try to ftp/sftp to my account (unlimited storage). It never works. Error Message: Could not connect to server. Same username and password as my desktop software and web portal. I was also trying to change to new passwork, web/desktop works but not for ftp/sftp.

I was trying to contact tech support, but the support.livedrive.com never let me in to see the support people.

hi there, I’m looking to use livedrive for my photography business use. I’m looking into signing up for the Pro Suite package as the unlimited backup and briefcase suits my needs, before I sign up, I have a few questions:

With the files that are in the briefcase, do they also get saved to where the files are backed up? Or do I need to set up the files to be backed up separately?

Am I able to manually ftp my files to my Backup account? And can I access the files? There may be a time where I need to access the backed up files on my computer but may not necessarily want to download every single file.

Once I’ve backup my folders, am I able to add more files to the backed up folder? For example, I upload “Folder ABC” and then a few months later, I want to add some more files within “Folder ABC”, is this possible? I reason I ask is because in my photography business, I start off with the raw files within a folder and then once I’ve created the jpg files for that client, I’d want to be able to upload the jpg files to the same folder where the raws are. Would this be done automatically or will I have the ability to do it via ftp which would be fine for me.

1) Files stored in your Briefcase on your computer will be stored on the Briefcase section of the cloud and will not be kept in the same area as your backups. However the files will still be stored on your computer and on the cloud by default.

2) You can manually FTP your files to your Briefcase but you cannot manually FTP your files to the Backup section of Livedrive. You can access the files without downloading them by logging into our web portal at livedrive.com/login

3) Backup is like a mirror of your hard drive. Livedrive will automatically add files and folders on your computer to the cloud. If you add, delete or edit a file on your computer, the same will happen in the cloud. If you accidentally delete a file we keep a copy on the cloud for 30 days. In your case you would simply need to put the JPEGs and the RAW files in the same file of your computer and they would be backed up to that folder in the cloud.

I backed up all my photos onto my briefcase using FileZilla – worked well, however I did encounter difficulties with a few things – firstly not all the files created thumbnails when I accessed my account through the browser. Worse than that, I found that for a few files, I wasn’t able to download them properly.

After consultation with LiveDrive support, it was recommended to use the LiveDrive client to do this instead, so I re-did the files using the LiveDrive Desktop client (it compares the checksum of files, so I didn’t have to wait for ALL the files to upload again) and everything works perfectly.

It’s a highly recommended service (but keep a local backup of everything too!)